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- Events from 2008: “Bottle Shock” Premiere At Chateau Montelena
- Events from 2008: “Bottle Shock” Special Screening
- Events from 2008: “Bottle Shock” New York Premiere

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- Photoshoots: Vanity Fair (2008)
- Photoshoots: Entertainment Weekly (2008)
- Photoshoots: Interview (2008)

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- Italian Film and Food Festival
- Sydney Film Festival 2008 Opening Night Gala

SHE’S no stranger to having her photo taken but Aussie starlet Rachael Taylor will be snap happy when she jets home to attend the Sydney premiere of her latest thriller Shutter.

The blonde beauty will attend the May 13 red carpet gala, flying in direct from Tinseltown.

The Tassie gal has been hot to trot since first hitting the big screen, care of Michael Bay’s blockbuster, based on the popular kids’ comic series Transformers last year.

She will pose up on the ruby rug both here and in Melbourne on the promo trail for the scary movie, co-starring Dawson’s Creek pin-up Joshua Jackson.

TRANSFORMERS star Rachael Taylor is to return home to star in a controversial low-budget film set in Sydney’s outer-west that offers a realistic insight into the lives of young Australian Lebanese men.
The producers of Cedar Boys are looking for young men of Middle Eastern background to play supporting roles in the film.

“It will be an explosive real-life look into the hearts and minds of young Australian Lebanese youth in Australia and their constant struggle for acceptance,” said Ranko Markovic, one of three producers of the gritty $1.5 million drama.

“Only someone who has lived that experience can ever really bring depth to that role, that’s why we are excited about this casting.”

Wentworthville resident Charbel Nehme welcomed the film in the hope it would promote greater cultural understanding: “I think a lot of us have been stereotyped and a film like this will be a good opportunity for people to be educated on our point of view.”

AS career moves go, it’s rare that a cancelled soap opera screened over summer provides a lucrative leg-up. But for local blonde bombshell Rachael Taylor, her current rise through the US film industry is built on Seven’s failed Home and Away spin-off, Headland.

While most of her soapie colleagues retreated behind coffee machines awaiting their next acting adventure, Taylor was snapped up by Hollywood’s insatiable appetite for talented, fresh faces - especially those who could double as a model.

She landed a part in Michael Bay’s blockbuster, Transformers, a critically panned extension of the ’80s cartoon, and followed it up with sexy romp The Tourist, opposite Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams.

Again the film was mostly forgettable, but it was another strong vehicle for Taylor to further her stateside career.

Women’s magazines began to take notice, shooting the glamorous youngster for several spreads - under taglines such as “Australia’s next big thing” and “The 10 fresh faces of Hollywood”.

It may be a long way from the small-town sensibilities of Launceston, Tasmania, where she grew up, but it’s apparent Taylor is making a name for herself in Tinseltown.

That said, during a recent interview, Taylor professed her continued love for the Apple Isle, where her parents remain and to where she escapes when not filming.

“You know, I go off and then I come home to the house I was born in and we sort of talk about the dog,” she said. “(My parents) genuinely really like their life in Tassie. They have this simple thing going on.

“I’m sure they’d love to come and visit me at some stage, but at the moment it just sort of seems like daughter’s off doing this kind of mystical thing out in the universe somewhere and it sort of involves movie-making.”

In May, Taylor returns to the horror genre - a class of film she’s familiar with, having completed gruesome local flick Man-Thing in 2005 - starring opposite Joshua Jackson in Shutter.

Taylor admits to a few initial issues given that Shutter is a US remake of the solid Thai film of the same name.

“I think the reason the Western market has tapped into the Asian horror films is that they’re so good,” she says, thankfully maintaining her Australian accent. “I think when a movie’s good, it’s like trying to remake apainting.

“I was hesitant about taking another crack at it because you don’t want to offend the fans of the genre.”

Shutter explores the lives of two newlyweds (Taylor and Jackson) who discover their honeymoon photos also feature some ghostly images.

Although many actors bemoan Hollywood’s current obsession with special effects and working with green screens, Taylor admits she enjoys the process.

The 23-year-old compares the process of making a movie where creatures, robots or ghosts are added long after her input is completed, to childhood imagination.

“It’s like going back to that time when you were eight years old and you’re pretending about monsters and fairies,” Taylor says.

But the hardest part of making Shutter had nothing to do with special effects.

It was the real world that kept throwing her for a loop.

The movie was shot in Japan and Taylor kept having what she called “lost in translation moments”.

She found herself feeling isolated and detached from the world because of the language barriers.

“I actually felt like a ghost in Tokyo,” Taylor says.

“The journey my character goes on in the film is a lot like that. She has to figure out what’s real and what’s not.”

As, we’re sure, does Taylor as she navigates life in Hollywood’s fish bowl.

Credit: News.com.au

“If I had a child, I would never let them near one,” she tells GQ magazine in its latest issue.

“I’ve had to un-learn a lot of beauty pageant tricks as an actor, because acting is about truth, humility and tearing down the facade - the complete opposite of a pageant.”

The magazine features a stylised picture session with Taylor, who is dressed up as a 1950s-style ice cream parlour waitress.

Taylor, who attended Sydney University for a short time before deferring her studies to join the short-lived TV soap Headland, made her name in the US with the hugely successful Transformers.

She is also the star of the upcoming horror flick Shutter.

“I got to let out a ’30s-style blood-curdling scream (in the movie),” she said.

“I was pretty serious. A horror-movie shriek is kind of cathartic: you let off this massive howl, then you feel soothed.”

Taylor also revealed she would not hesitate to “nude up” for a movie if the role genuinely required it.

“I don’t have a problem with it, and I’m not that protective of it,” she said.

“I have an Aussie ‘get changed on the beach, whatever’ thing about me.

“But I’m against women whose role in a film is just to be an attractive accessory.”